Welll the saga continues.
I, not sure if I mentioned at the beginning, but OH was epilepsy as a result of the car accident he had 25 years ago and takes anticonvulsants. The seizures that he had that brought him into hospital and the ones that he continued to have while he was on the ward were very unusual, though.
Yesterday, I visited OH and was catting to him in hia room when he had a small seizure infront of me, When he came round he said "oh" I feel all faint and dizzy". I explained that he had had a seizure and he nodded and said "Ive been getting a lot of that since I came back from hospital" He has been getting very confused recently, so I didnt think a great deal about it, but then he said that they had cut down on his anticonvulsants! I couldnt see that the care home would do this, but thought Id better check.
I spoke to the manager and she looked up on his drugs chart to see what he was supposed to be having and I then discovered that OH was right! He had got the details wrong, but his anticonvulsants had indeed been reduced - at some stage while he was in hospital someone had decided to reduce his anticonvulsants (against the advice from the National Neurological Hospital) so that his tegratol was cut down from14,000 mgs a day to 200 mgs a day, all at once.
To say I am shocked is an understatement. Anticonvulsants should
never be reduced suddenly and to reduce by such a large amount is appalling. Suddenly things began to make sense - the continued seizures in the hospital (particularly the bout of massive seizures about 5 days after he was admitted), his regular complaint that he had a headache, his fluctuating presentation and the way he is sleeping more says to me that he is having multiple minor seizures throughout each day. Even when the care home phoned me up to say they thought he was getting a UTI as he was suddenly much, much more confused and very wobbly on his feet it could equally have been due to him having a major seizure - if it happened while he was in his room then nobody would have seen it, and I suspect that the minor seizures are going unnoticed because they are so small that unless you knew what to look for you wouldnt see them.
I have left an urgent message on the National Neurological Hospitals epilepsy clinics answer phone asking for advice and Im hoping that they will contact me again soon.
@millalm - thats terrible. Words fail me.
Nothing has been said to me about SILs party